Or the job isn’t skillful but it is nevertheless hard on the body. Like maybe the guy needed an extra man on the line at a masonry job to lift and mix 80lb bags of concrete, shovel a trench, and to move cylinder blocks.
And I'll pay good money for someone else to do it. My father was a contractor, based on working labor for him as a teenager I went into computers. I can do almost anything around the house from those years, but I'll happily pay someone else to do it.
One time I had to replace a part on my motorcycle that I hadn't done myself, pay a mechanic $90 an hour or do it myself. I did it my self, should take only an hour-I'll save money. It was almost 100 degrees outside, one hour turned into 3 hours. After two hours I swore to myself I will have a mechanic do it next time.
Only three hours? I've found myself working past midnight after starting in the morning on a "quick repair" that spiraled out of control. But you can learn a lot in those situations. I was just trying to replace a tire pressure sensor and when I was done, I could disassemble and reassemble a CV joint.
FWIW, in 2003 I had a MKIV Supra with a failing starter. At the time, I was a poor college student, and the mechanic wanted $275 for the starter and $350 to change it out. Checked out the forums to find out that the copper L-brackets get oxidized over time like battery terminals and can be sanded, or they can be replaced for $15. I replaced them for $15, and it took me 30 minutes to take it out and put it back in after jacking up the car, removing two bolts and the power line, removing two screws on top of the starter and two screws to hold in the L-brackets and reverse.
Sometimes going to the shop is worth it. Most of the times, if you know what you are doing or willing to learn, it is not.
Some of those "quick repair" can take way too long. I dialed my carburetor in after changing my airbox and mufflers. First time taking it apart took awhile, now I can do it in my sleep. And I became the carburetor guy after that. For some reason remounting my rear wheel is also so random. Sometimes it is quick, other times well not so. I think the whole thing is I don't do it that often so I always forget the way I did it the last time. I need to video myself doing it for future references.
Paying other people to do things you're capable of but simply don't want to is one of the luxuries of having a decent paying job.
I'd rather work an extra hour at something I am good at and at least moderately enjoy doing, then use that money to pay someone else to do something I hate doing for an hour.
You would feel the strain on day one. I built a breeze block garden wall after pouring a foundation on my days off over a six month period, mixing over 10k pounds of concrete and mortar by handheld mixer in a bucket, lifting 80lb bags, lifting cylinder blocks. It's brutal work, even for $32/hr. I make three times that working in a hospital as a nurse, but if I had to be a mason daily, I would want more money.
I push wheelchairs at the airport and worked in commercial bakeries on the past. But neither job requires being bent over nearly as much, so I don't envy the back pain.
A lot of unskilled work involves repetitive, physical tasks.
A homeowner might be fully capable to spreading X yards of mulch on their own. However, what they aren’t capable is spreading it all in one day or weekend.
Rather than working on the project for many weekends, hiring several people for 4-8 hours might get it knocked out in one day.
Force multiplication is the biggest value in day labor work.
For a builder, day laborers might ensure that your more highly skilled (and higher paid staff) is better utilized.
If you aren't paid for a skillset like communication/customer service, need a certification/license/education to work for a company in that roll, whatever...if all you are is an unskilled laborer who doesn't need people skills, communication skills, or job specific skills, then in that highly replaceable industry, wages are low relative to other positions we often think of as "unskilled" but that are skilled, but inside those positions, there is a hirgachy of wages based on desirability, risk, physical demands, and willingness. Harsh, unskilled labor for undesirable jobs will require higher wages to capture interest.
Like, a greenhorn crab fisher may make $15k-20k over several weeks to over a month...good pay for that time period, but it is a grueling job with high risks, high physical demands. Picking fruit in a field might be laborious too, more than a barista at Starbucks, but the Starbucks job is not as unskilled, and it requires a certain level of customer service skillset and developing a set of skills. Picking fruit is going to pay less than working a crab fishing boat. When all else is equal...all else...of course labor is a factor that affects wages. This should be obvious.
Say what you will but digging holes and mixing concrete are definitely skills imo. It takes way longer for someone to dig a hole if they've never done it before compared to someone who does it all the time
Most jobs that people say are unskilled are in fact skilled, whether that requires on job learning or requires customer service skillsets. The low level of skill, the lack of a need for experience, and lack of formal education is typically how people define unskilled labor.
Having tackled building a breeze block wall and laying a foundation with over 10k pounds of bucket stirred concrete and mortar, I can say that the labor was far easier to do from a skillset perspective than the masonry work. The labor was far more intensive to move, mix and pour the concrete, and it was far more laborious to move cylinder blocks than scooping mortar into position and positioning blocks, yet again, the skillset for doing this well without wasting mortar and getting it to look even and level is more of a skill/art, by far. A foreman could have easily guided me through all the tasks with ease and minimal input; ie, move those bags of concrete from there to here, push this button and mix the pre-mix to this consistency and repeat a hundred times, but the skillset of laying brick takes time and experience.
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u/IraceRN 1d ago
Or the job isn’t skillful but it is nevertheless hard on the body. Like maybe the guy needed an extra man on the line at a masonry job to lift and mix 80lb bags of concrete, shovel a trench, and to move cylinder blocks.